HIE virtual conference advises firm financial control
At last week’s Highlands and Islands Enterprise sixth Virtual Conference, the message was that businesses with good financial management would continue to prosper in the tough economic climate.
Armour emphasised that “cash is king” and that companies which have a firm control on their financial management in order to maximise the cash in and minimise the cash going out.
“For many companies this means delaying payment to creditors, but this should only be used sparingly and as a last resort because of the reputational damage it can do to a business,” said Armour.
“There are many other techniques that can be considered, such as reviewing stock levels, selling surplus assets, leasing rather than buying, use of VAT accounting, shopping around for services and suppliers, staff incentives based on cash collection rather than purely sales generation and confidential invoice discounting.”
Mr Armour emphasised: “The key to keeping control of your business is to know your business and that means having good quality financial package, and looking not just at historical data but updated projections, customer feedback and market data. This is often easy and cheap to obtain.”
His presentation, entitled ‘Financial Management in a Recession’ contained a range of other advice and tips on credit control, cost controls, working with banks and market position is available at the Learningworks website.
Learningworks is the HIE website dedicated towards encouraging business success through skills and training.
The Virtual Conferences are available as free downloadable podcasts from the learning-works site.
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